The Witness Projection Program
by X180
Summary: They couldn't save Tweek from dying, but they could salvage his memories of the moment right before he was murdered. Craig knew he was in for a ride the moment he agreed to help them, he just didn't realize how much of Tweek's life went untold before his death. CREEK/MULTICHAP Chapter 3 UP!
1. Chapter 1

**I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK**

**Chapter Track: Dare - Gorillaz**

**I haven't done a chapter fic since my hair was long. Anyways this was a thought that popped up a little while ago, and I decided to pursue it. I'll be honest, it's a tad more science fiction than I'm used to working with. And after a few months of just deleting everything I wrote and hating my rather boring writing style, here I am ready to head the trash throne on this dying website. **

**TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR: Existiential Crisis, Death, Minor Gore, and Swearing.**

* * *

They salvaged his body just in time.

However, they clotted the heavy, pulsing flow of blood far too late. Wires ran from drilled out bits of his skull to a machine like a hard drive feeding memory to a computer. A machine pumped artificial life into him, indicated by the soft rise and fall of his chest. His eyes were half-lidded, shimmering life fading from them with every passing moment. If you let you concentrated to the point where you became disillusioned, you could almost see his fingers twitch and the small tremors wracking his body like dropping pebbles in still water.

But nobody in the room could deny the simple fact:

Tweek Tweak was dead.

Apparently, he had been walking home when a lethal knife wound was inflicted upon his chest cavity, and he would've died of blood loss had I not found him exactly twenty six minutes thereafter, and too late.

I had found him curled up upon himself in a dirty alleyway by the railroad tracks, chittering soft nonsense to himself to keep his eyes from slipping. "Seventy-two, purple. Ticks, ticks, ticks. Gah. It's cold out."

And now, his parents had relucatntly consented to allowing some crazy psychologist 'innovators' mess with his mind.

"What are you doing now?" I asked, jaw stiff. My anxiety was a two litre bottle of Pepsi, and the events of this day was dropping Mentos into it, leaving me to helplessly try and hold the leaking cap shut. The first scientist, a heavy set man with a thick stubble trailing down his neck answered impatiently.

"We're attaching his memory core to the visual. This way we'll be able to see his memories as we reconstruct them," he grunted, fixing yet another metal jack into Tweek's head. He looked surreal, like an illustration inspired by a dystopian cyborg flick. Weird stuff happened all the time in South Park, I tried to remind myself. And yet, I couldn't remember a time where weird stuff drilled holes into my best friend's head to uncover a murder case.

I twirled the discolored yellow braids attached to the earflaps of my aviator's hat to release some of my nerves. Tweek had been avoiding me lately, and that's the thought that made me nervous. He'd just been uncharacteristically introverted and withdrawn, and quiet. He'd always been a bit antisocial, but never had he shelled himself away from me. I cringed and bit my lower lip, forcing myself to my surroundings.

"It's coming up," the second scientist, a lean woman with a face and pixie cut that reminded me of the pictures of the authors who wrote Every Successful Woman's Autobiography Ever. "We're blurry, Steven. Up the processor."

"That's a tad dangerous at this state. His body's still unstable," the first scientist, Steven, hummed nervously, adjusting his wireframe glasses atop the bridge of his nose. He checked Tweek's vitals, and then reluctantly switched a knob that worked the processing machine.

Tweek's body tensed for a moment, and then went slack, clearing up the fuzzy edges on the monitor. What I saw then was an expanse of white followed by an ever-shaking monitor.

"Yes! It's there!" Steven jumped up, pumping his fist in the air. He waddled over to Tweek's bedside and yelled: "You hear me alright?"

The camera buzzed out a pattern of noise that only barely resembed what Steven said. The camera jerked, and then I head him.

"W-what the hell? Where am I? Am I dead? Jesus, tell me I'm not dead!" Tweek screamed, collapsing in on himself. The monitor showed his hands covering his eyes, and then there was nothing but the cracks of his palms.

"Well we're getting a responsive first person point of view, but the bad news is that his sensory receptors are completely blown. He won't be able to hear our commands, not to mention reconstruct an entire memory." The woman sighed, adjusting some of the metal jacks and rechecking his vitals.

"What now?" I muttered, staring helplessly at Tweek's monitor. He was panicking. You could hear his rapid breathing and soft whines echo around the room. I couldn't just sit here and do nothing.

The scientists talked for a moment before they caught my eye. They chatted some more, and then they broke their whispering to address me.

"We've got an interesting proposition for you," they hummed.

Silence overtook the room. Only the desperate pleas of help from Tweek could be heard. I couldn't take one more second of it.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked determinedly.

The scientists shared an uneasy look before nodding in silent pact.

"We may have a solution -and we don't think there's much time to dote on the situation, so a simple yes or no in short time will suffice- but what we need you to do is go after him, per say." Steven explained lowly. "If we can hook up receptors to you, and connect you to Tweek's subconscious, we may be able to transmit messages to him to help reconstruct the memory."

"You're gonna drill holes in my head?" I asked, knitting my brow.

"No! No no! Since we don't need to see your memories or point of view, that'd be rather unnecessary. No, instead we're just going to inject you with a serum that should connect you wirelessly." The woman assured hastily.

"Should," I stressed.

"Yes, should. Now we're running out of time and the added stress levels in your friend is tragically compromising our time, so if you could please agree or decline?" The woman snapped.

I thought for a moment. I didn't have much to lose, and I'd only regret not getting to say goodbye if I didn't. So I did. I nodded, and let them sit me down on a plastic chair and drive a needle into my neck. It stung like hellfire, but the pain ebbed away almost instantly. What replaced it was mind-numbing wooziness and drunken vision. I swayed back and forth slightly, trying to resist the hazy drug, but it put me to sleep faster, and the next thing I saw was blackness.


	2. Chapter 2

**I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK**

**Chapter Track: Turn Off the Lights- Panic! at the Disco**

**I hope everyone is having a good day today, and that everyone is drinking water, and listening to their favorite songs, and getting over that thing that's been troubling them lately. I don't want to do girl's softball. **

**That is all. Have Good Day. **

* * *

When I opened my eyes, I could see only an expanse of white nothingness, like something you'd see if it snowed in a grass field five miles from Everything in Civilization. The ground under me was hard and cold like smooth tile, and the seamless blend between ground and sky disoriented me.

I stood up and stretched, rubbing my hands together and re-adjusting my hat.

_"Can you hear us? We haven't got you hooked up to the monitor, so we can't see you,"_ I heard Steven's disembodied voice echo over the nothingness.

"I can hear you." I assured.

_"Fantastic! Now just find your little friend so we can get this done with, alright?"_

"Right." I looked in both directions before turning on my heel to glance behind me. Not a trace of Tweek's blond hair nor his tall body in sight. I called out to him.

"Tweek! Dude!" I yelled, testing out my subconscious legs. Thankfully, they proved just as functional as my tangible ones.

"Who's that?!"

I stopped dead in my tracks and whirled around. Right behind me, not even a room's length away, was Tweek, eyes darting behind the spaces between his fingers. I shook my head and blinked. He hadn't been there only a few seconds ago. I walked slowly towards him, faintly aware that my shoes were making no noise at all as they slapped against the dreamscape floor beneath me.

_"You're on the monitor!"_ Steven called from the Real World. _"Great job, Tucker. Now get your friend to calm down so we can get him at a safe mental level to begin the visualization."_

I was starkly unaware of what Steven meant by any of his excited rambling, but I figured it'd be best to keep my questions to a minimum. I stepped towards Tweek, every footstep somehow longer than the one before it until I had cleared the length in an astonishing four steps. I knelt down in front of Tweek and inspected him carefully.

His messy hair was clean, and his face was unblemished. The prominent bags under his eyelids had disappeared completely, and his crooked yellow teeth looked now as if they'd undergone cosmetic surgery. They peeked out from his mouth, biting down on his lower lip. I was astonished. In death, and unfortunately, Tweek Tweak looked beautiful.

I slowly inched my hands towards his until our fingers connected. The sudden warmth caused Tweek to jerk back and whine, but I shushed him and wrapped my fingers around his, gently pulling them from his eyes. Tweek looked up at me nervously, blinking as if he were a confused puppy. His hands were so warm, and yet I couldn't feel the pulse of blood under them.

"Are you real?" he asked, voice barely audible, even in the absence of sound his world of Nothing brought.

"I'm real enough," I said simply, gently rolling my fingers over his hand soothingly. I was accustomed to this touch- physical contact calmed my best friend down like no other.

For a moment, I let him close his eyes. It felt as if we were simply in the aftermath of one of his anxiety attacks, trying to assure each other we were okay. Underneath the welcomed normality of the situation, however, was the fact that we were literally existing in the essence of Nothing.

I spoke up to fill this nothing with words.

"Are you okay?"

And he replied.

"Am I dead?"

And you really don't have the choice to lie to somebody about their state of morality, especially when you're sitting in their dead subconscious, so I nodded.

"Yeah."

"And you're dead too?" He continued, knitting his brow and trying to hide that his hands were tensing with anxiety.

"No."

"That's a relief," Tweek hummed, looking up into the vast empty sky.

We sat there for a little while more until I received more input from Steven.

_"Ahoy, Craig! You're doing fantastic. Tweek's levels are dropping like dominoes. He'll be out of critical condition soon, so keep it up."_

"What was that, man? It sounded like buzzing. Are there ethereal bees in this place?" Tweek drawled, trying to crack a crooked smile with his perfectly aligned teeth.

_"Nah. That's Steven. You can't hear him since your sensory outputs collapsed when you died,"_ I explained.

"What."

I realized with a start that Tweek had no idea what was going on. The scientists that had moved into town were a secret government-funded experiment, and they had barged into the room long after Tweek lost consciousness. So I explained it all to him as concisely as possible. His condition, the scientists, and the wires attached to his head. He seemed to be taking it very well, until he smacked me upside the skull.

"You bastard! You let me become a submissive to government testing, man? Oh Jesus Christ, I need coffee," he hissed, taking in a sharp breath.

_"You hear that, Craig? He wants coffee."_

"Yes, I'm well aware," I replied. Tweek gave me an odd look, but I brushed him off. "He loves coffee. It calms him down."

_"Wonderful!"_ Steven cheered. _"Let's start easing him into visualization. This is his dreamscape, so he should be able to make real whatever he wants. Tell him to think of coffee. Like, really concentrate on it."_

"A'ight. Um. Tweek, dude. Steven says you should be able to make coffee appear if you really think about it. Can you try that?" I asked softly.

Tweek nodded and scrunched his brow, closing his eyes. We waited for a moment, and then a minute. And then five minutes. Still, nothing.

"I can't do it, man! I must be out of it," Tweek whimpered.

I could argue that he was never 'in it' to begin with, but I held back. "Alright... try this. Imagine ordering coffee from the Starbucks. Like, visualize it," I prompted, unsure of my method.

Tweek offered me a skeptical glance, but agreed. He let his eyes slip shut again, and this time, he didn't knit his brows or tense his shoulders. He looked peaceful, as if he were falling asleep instead of trying to break the laws of universal matter.

It caught me off guard when I started smelling roast coffee beans. And then, I could hear the soft trickle of hot liquid being poured into a Styrofoam cup. Steam rose all around us in big wispy clouds. I could see Tweek's lips moving, and I could hear his whispers.

"Soy mocha with caramel and two shots of expresso, please," he mumbled.

And then there it was. The ring of a cash register that even sent a jolt through Tweek. It was followed thereafter with the outline of a styrofoam cup slowly becoming opaque in Tweek's hands.

_"There it is! There it is! Tilda, do you see this?"_ Steven hooted.

_"I'll be damned,"_ the woman, Tilda, replied.

When Tweek opened his eyes, he was excited to find his coffee placed securely in his grasp. "No way, man!" He laughed, giddy. He tipped it back against his lips and took a long drink before pulling the cup away and staring me in the eye with such childish enthusiasm that I was taken aback. "It's... It's real!"

He suddenly looked at me with horror in his eyes. "What irresponsible hack gave me this power, man? I could make... I could make an _army_."

Steven's voice boomed in my ears. _"Don't let him make an army!"_

"You're not allowed to make an army," I told him.

"Shit," he replied. "Are you sure, man?"

"Yes, I'm very sure making an army is forbidden right now. We're trying to uncover your murderer right now, not have fun."

Tweek's face fell at the reminder of this grievous task ahead of us. He gave a terse nod and crossed his arms, taking another languid sip of his coffee and feeling the cup excessively, as though he was still unable to believe it existed.

"How are his vitals, Steven?" I asked.

_"Great! We want to lead him through one more exercise before we touch on his memory bank, however."_ Steven announced. He hummed in thought before speaking again. _"Tell him to imagine a scene. His favorite place, perhaps?"_

"Okay."

I directed my eyes back at Tweek, who looked at me expectantly. He was obviously eager to test his new abilities more.

"Steven says to imagine your favorite place," I said. "Visualize it like you did your coffee."

Tweek nodded and set his coffee down. He bit his lower lip as he thought, and I watched his face etch out different expressions like a caricature artist animating. The temperature of Tweek's world of Nothing declined rapidly, until I was near shivering. Tweek lifted his hand and made a knocking motion, sending booming noises through the expanse of white. I heard an invisible door swing open, and then the sound of padding up carpeted stairs.

And then I realized where he was going. No, I thought to myself, it can't be.

But as the outline of my 8th grade bedroom started taking place, my suspicions were affirmed.

The walls were a thick dark blue, and the ceiling a canvas of black. Glowing plastic stars dotted the ceiling and walls, along with tacked on posters of bands I enjoyed back then. My old race car bed took place against the wall next to the window, and I heard a familiar squeaking noise that made my blood run cold. Whipping my head around to my computer desk, I could see my guinea pig's cage and there inside was my long-passed pet, Stripe, looking alive as ever. Tweek had nailed every last detail, from my collection of Red Racer DVDs, to the stack of old drawings I kept on my computer desk. The smell of teenager and puberty was thick in the air, along with scents of gingerbread and chocolate.

"Christmastime, my house. Two years ago," I whispered, aghast at the flood of eerie nostalgia peppering my senses.

_"Nice place you've got,"_ Tilda whistled, _"I'm excited- this is much more vivid than we expected it would be."_

_"Most of our test subjects before had trouble visualizing entire scenes without botching some aspects of it,"_ Steven explained. _"Of course we can use the computer to help generate the blurry parts, but it's much more helpful if we get a 100% accurate candid memory."_

Tweek opened his eyes nervously and glanced at his shoes. "My favorite place," he said simply.

"It's so... Weird. It's like we're thirteen again," I forced a chuckle.

"Well I practically lived in your house over winter break that year. I'd hope this was accurate, man," Tweek snorted, standing up and stretching.

"It's kind of freaky, honestly," I muttered, walking over to Stripe's cage and releasing the hatch. My pet scurried out into my hand, as if he knew that we'd been apart for two years since he died. He curled up in my palms, and I cracked a grin.

"Old fatty," I poked his side playfully. Stripe wooped and scuttled up my coat, perching like a pirate's mate at my shoulder.

"You know," I drawled mindlessly, letting Stripe curl under my ear flap. "You're taking this death thing pretty well. I figured you'd be bouncing off the walls and inconsolable."

"Well, I'm already fucking dead," Tweek rolled his eyes and clicked his jaw. "There's really not much to freak out about anymore. On my wild never-ending list of fears, not much tops this."

He had a point. Still, I couldn't help but notice how on edge his voice was, and how his fingers would twitch as if he were trying to crack his knuckles. He was eating sour candy and trying to pretend it tasted sweet.

_"Don't get too comfy boys,"_ Steven called. _"We're just about ready to pull the memory."_

"What?" I asked.

_"Especially traumatic experiences are difficult for people to envision,"_ Steven began, grunting and I could hear papers flipping, as if he were reading old test results._ "It takes a long time for a patient to let themselves ease into the memory, so it's typically better if we just, well, force it."_

I scowled. "Wait, if you could just force it, then why are we going through these stupid exercises? We could've been done already!"

_"Have consideration, boy!"_ Tilda snapped. _"Your friend was in no shape to go through a memory pull. We think he's ready now. Go ahead. Tell him. Then, we can be done, which I'm sure you'll be glad to know."_

I frowned and flipped them off. "Tweek," I grumbled. "They're gonna force out your memory of right before you died. That way we can identify the killer and be done, alright?"

Tweek glared at me and kicked the carpet. "Whatever, man." His gaze wavered for a bit, and then he looked away, flustered.

_"Alright, we're gonna pull the memory now."_

And that's when Tweek went down and the world of Nothing was drenched in black.

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**Kudos to: Style Marshlovski, lolitathegoddessorca860, My Own Little Universe, TheGrimKeeper and everyone who Favorited or followed!**


	3. Chapter 3

**I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK**

**Chapter Track: Daybreak- Overwerk**

**I'm just gonna finish this with no regards to whether anyone actually reads it. Fuck it, I'm not leaving this one half-finished.**

* * *

Imagine darkness all around you- cold vast nothing washing over your skin like the ghost of an icy wave, making all your joints stiff and muscles tense. Now imagine, as you are in this ethereal world of non-existence, that there is a sound bounding off of every invisible wall. And that sound is unchained screaming. If you can picture this, then you probably have about half an idea of what I was going through in those moments.

Apparently, as Steven had failed to tell either of us, that forcing memories was painful.

Finally, as I looked around wildly, trying to draw my hands to my ears and failing, I caught a shock of blond. Tweek.

He was clutching his temples and hollering, knuckles white with exertion.

"Fuck! Fuck! Stop!" Tweek roared. Tears streamed down his cheeks and his chest heaved violently.

I fought against the white noise in my bones and managed to clench my fists. Against my better will, I stepped over to Tweek's crumpled form and knelt, wrapping my arms around his neck. He was cold.

Tweek's hands instantly latched on to my back and balled up the fabric of my coat in his fists. He pulled me close and tightened his arms around my body like a constrictor, choking me.

"Shh," I managed, using my feeble and numb hands to lead his head into my coat. The screams muffled.

"Hurts, man," Tweek hissed.

"You're hurting him!" I yelled at Steven, looking up and mentally knocking myself on the head because _of course_ I wouldn't see anything but the great black vastness that was above me. "Stop it!"

_"Apologies, Craig!"_ Steven babbled. _"We know it's extremely painful! That's why we needed him to be in good shape before we did this! Hang tight, we're starting to get a visual." _

"There's no other way?" I whimpered.

_"Like I said, it'll take too much time! We don't have all the time in the world! This is an extremely important beta test, Craig. We have to do anything and everything possible to ensure a successful execution." _Steven snapped. I was taken aback, but said nothing else.

As it turned out, we had to_ hang tight_ for another ten minutes of agonizing as Tweek started shivering, pinned between being in intense pain and becoming numb to said pain. When we finally started to see a scenery, I knew instantly that something had gone wrong.

And I knew this, because laying in front of me was a familiar coffee table with a loaded revolver splayed out on it.

_"This doesn't seem right..."_ Steven hummed thoughtfully.

"You're right," I grumbled. "This vision isn't even from this year. Or the past year. This memory can't've been younger than... Shit. This is from the fifth grade, isn't it?"

The world formed around us, and I found it more befitting of a nightmare rather than a child's memory. Or perhaps, all children's memories are nightmares laced with a nostalgic drug. Either way, the woodwork was twisted, and all the pictures upon the mantle above me looked down with a foreign sinister expression. The flowers, harmless daisies, were studded with purple hooked thorns. The gun glinted like a center piece, drawing my eyes to it and keeping them attracted like it was a magnet and my pupils were composed of iron fillings. The walls stretched and curved above our heads, creating an illusion that made everything look tall and overpowering and warped.

So this was how Tweek saw the world.

My mind was drawn back to his presence when his fingers fell slack and he sighed in relief.

"God, that was fucking horrible," Tweek snarled, hugging me tighter. I didn't protest.

_"No no, this is wrong! Tell your friend that we need to go through another memory pull!"_ Steven demanded.

"Don't you see him? He's not in any condition. And I know you wouldn't want to jeopardize your shitty experiment," I snarled back, flipping them off. Tweek looked up at me fearfully, as if knowing that he may have to experience that crippling pain again. I coaxed his nose back into my shirt.

_"The boy's right,"_ Tilda agreed. _"Maybe this memory will reveal something anyways."_

"Am I...?" Tweek whimpered.

"No. You're good. But we're gonna have to relax in this memory for a little while if that's not a problem."

"Okay. I can deal with that."

And then, cascading down the stairs, was a man with thick brown hair holding his ten year old son like a bag of kittens to be drowned.

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**Kudos to: Style Marshlovski**


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